Christiana Zenner

Christiana Z. Peppard is Associate Professor of Theology, Science and Ethics in the Department of Theology at Fordham University, where she is affiliated faculty in Environmental Studies and American Studies. Her research engages religious ecological ethics at the intersection of Catholic social teaching, ecological anthropology, natural law theory and developments in the earth sciences.

Professor Peppard is the author of Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (Orbis Books, 2014) and co-editor of Just Sustainability: Ecology, Technology, and Resource Extraction (Orbis Books, 2015) and Expanding Horizons in Bioethics (Springer, 2005). Her peer-reviewed articles are published in venues such as the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Journal of Moral Theology, New Theology Review, and Journal of the Society for Christian Ethics.

Dr. Peppard teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses at Fordham, including: Religion and Ecology, Human Nature After Darwin, Ecological Ethics, and Theology and Contemporary Science. She lectures nationally and internationally on these topics and has provided analysis of contemporary topics in ecological ethics and religion and science in venues such as Public Radio International, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The New Republic, the Washington Post, TED-Ed, MSNBC, and others.

Professor Peppard’s research engages religious ecological ethics at the intersection of Catholic social teaching, ecological anthropology, natural law theory and developments in the earth sciences. She is an expert in emerging fresh water ethics, and her current manuscript project engages the quandaries surrounding the values of water in the Anthropocene. Other areas of expertise and research interest include: Laudato Si’, ecological theory and political ecology, feminist natural law theory, comparative religious responses to Darwin and evolutionary theory, and the history and ethics of the Catholic Church’s engagement with modern biological sciences.